| Dictionary: League of Nations |
A world organization established in 1920 to promote international cooperation and peace. It was first proposed in 1918 by President Woodrow Wilson, although the United States never joined the League. Essentially powerless, it was officially dissolved in 1946.
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| US Military Dictionary: League of Nations |
An association of countries established in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles to promote international cooperation and achieve international peace and security. It was powerless to stop Italian, German, and Japanese expansionism leading to World War II, and was replaced by the United Nations in 1945. It included provisions for arbitrating international disputes, reducing armaments, and imposing collective military and economic sanctions against any nation that violated the political independence and territorial integrity of another. However, the United States never joined the League of Nations because irreconcilable disputes developed between progressives and conservatives in the American internationalist movement over whether the United States should be able to expand its army and navy and exert force independently.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
| Political Dictionary: League of Nations |
The League of Nations was established at the end of the First World War by the victor powers meeting at the Paris Peace Conference. Its strongest advocate was US President Woodrow Wilson. But ironically his own country's Senate refused to ratify membership and hence the world's strongest state withdrew into a form of ‘isolation’. Of the other great powers only Great Britain and France were to be members throughout the League's existence. Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and Italy joined late or resigned, or did both.
At Wilson's insistence the League was given the task of preventing international armed aggression through a system of so-called collective security. False hopes were thus raised in many quarters that all aggressors henceforth would be deterred or effectively punished by the leading states in the League's establishment. During the 1930s this illusion was dramatically dispelled. Analysts have differed ever since as to whether such a system of collective security would in all circumstances have proved unworkable or whether the failure was due in the particular case to so few great powers being loyal members.
At all events, when 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria, Great Britain and France, the only League members at the time with significant regional ‘clout’, proved unwilling and would perhaps in any case have been unable to impose effective sanctions on the aggressor. Next, in 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia in whose fate no other great power had any direct interest. This, it was widely recognized, was the decisive test case for the League. For Great Britain and France clearly did on this occasion have the capacity to defeat Italy if matters came to an all-out war. But in neither London nor Paris was there sufficient support for the imposition of anything more vigorous than partial economic sanctions (which themselves were lifted in 1936). The British cabinet was satisfied that they could not risk the loss of even part of their fleet in a war with Italy at a time when their possessions in the Far East were thought to be menaced by Japan and when the US administration was seen to be hamstrung by congressional neutrality legislation. Similarly, the French held that war with Italy for the sake of Abyssinia would be quixotic at a time when all French forces were thought to be needed for a possible early showdown with Nazi Germany. Abyssinia was accordingly incorporated into the Italian empire in 1936. As a body for resisting international aggression the League had thus effectively perished. It continued to exist in a moribund condition until the end of the Second World War when it was formally replaced by the United Nations.
— David Carlton
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: League of Nations |
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| British History: League of Nations |
The League of Nations was formally established on 10 January 1920 with a permanent headquarters at Geneva. It was very much the brainchild of President Woodrow Wilson. As a peacekeeping body, the League suffered from two handicaps which proved insuperable. First, some of the most important world powers were not members: Germany was excluded until 1926, the Bolshevik government in Russia denounced it as a capitalist club and did not join until 1934; worst of all, Wilson failed to persuade the US Senate to ratify the treaty and the most powerful nation of the world was therefore absent. Secondly, the League had no armed force of its own and member states were reluctant to provide troops: it was therefore obliged to rely upon economic sanctions, which were difficult to enforce and slow to take effect.
The League had some modest successes in its early days. Its specialized agencies did much to encourage international co-operation against slavery, drugs, and disease, and the Permanent Court of International Justice, set up by the League in 1920, resolved a number of minor disputes. In December 1925 at Locarno, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy reaffirmed their commitment to peace, a prelude to Germany's entry into the League in 1926.
The League's first major test came in 1931 when the Japanese invaded Manchuria. The League retorted with a condemnation of Japan's violation of the covenant, and the Japanese promptly withdrew from the League in March 1933. A second challenge came in October 1935, when Mussolini's Italy invaded Ethiopia. This time the League did attempt to enforce economic sanctions, though the invasion was completed before sanctions could bite. But, in any case, the rise of Nazi Germany presented a challenge on a far larger scale. Hitler had always made clear his contempt for the League of Nations as a talking shop and a tool for the Versailles victors. He lost no time in withdrawing Germany. The remilitarization of the Rhineland, the anschluss with Austria, the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, and the invasion of Poland followed in quick succession, with the League helpless. The council met only once after the outbreak of the Second World War, on 8 April 1946 when it handed over its powers to the new United Nations.
| US History Encyclopedia: League of Nations |
The name of this organization is generally traced to the 1908 book La Société des Nations by the influential French peace negotiator Leon Bourgeois. During World War I a growing number of political leaders, including Lord Robert Cecil in Britain, Jan Christian Smuts in South Africa, and the former U.S. president William Howard Taft, pointed to the need for an international organization that would facilitate greater security and cooperation among nations. The U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, whose name would become most closely associated with the League of Nations, had also repeatedly proposed such an organization. Wilson's concern to set up an international organization to secure and maintain peace between nation-states was laid out in a number of speeches and public addresses before and after the United States entered World War I in April 1917. On 8 January 1918, in a major address to the U.S. Congress, he outlined his proposal to end the war and provide a framework for a new postwar international order. Wilson's address centered on his so-called Fourteen Points, which, with some revision, provided the overall framework for the negotiation of an armistice in Europe by 11 November 1918. Of particular importance was his fourteenth point, which called for the establishment of an organization that would protect the independence and sovereignty of all nations. Wilson certainly played an important role in the establishment of the League of Nations, even if the notion that he was its veritable "father" is exaggerated.
Origins
In a more general way the League of Nations was grounded in the rise and fall of the practice of consultation among the European powers, which was increasingly formalized as the Concert of Europe after 1815. By the late nineteenth century the Concert of Europe was breaking down in the context of the rise of imperial Germany. The emergence of the United States as an increasingly important player also weakened the balance of power on which the Concert of Europe rested, as did the wider social and political changes in Europe itself. However, the central idea of the Concert of Europe—that the Great Powers had particular rights and duties in international relations—underpinned the creation of the Council of the League of Nations. This was the organization's supreme decision-making body and included only the major powers.
Despite the influence of the Concert of Europe, a more immediate and equally important catalyst for the League of Nations was World War I. The war stimulated a general dissatisfaction with the management of inter-state relations and encouraged growing interest in a new international system of collective security. In May 1916 Woodrow Wilson publicly spoke of the need to reform the international order. This gave the whole idea greater legitimacy and encouraged European political leaders to examine the idea. This interest was further strengthened when the Russian Revolution of 1917 brought pressure to bear on the old international system. A number of draft versions of the constitution for the League of Nations were produced by the United States and by the European governments. The actual peace conference in 1919 focused on a draft produced jointly by the United States and Britain.
Establishment and Organization
By 1918 there was general agreement that a League of Nations should be established. The key articles of the actual covenant (constitution) spelled out the role of the league in identifying and addressing threats to peace, the settlement of disputes, and the imposition of sanctions against states violating international agreements. These articles occasioned limited disagreement. Participating nations also generally agreed that the league should be made up of an executive council, a deliberative assembly, and an administrative secretariat, but they disagreed over the exact function and makeup of these bodies. In an early draft of the covenant, membership of the council was restricted to the Great Powers and any smaller nation-states that the Great Powers chose to invite. However, the formulation that eventually prevailed designated the Great Powers as permanent members of the council while small powers had nonpermanent membership. The operation and membership of the assembly, which was the model for the General Assembly of the United Nations after 1945, was also a subject of some debate. In fact its overall operation and significance was really only worked out in subsequent years.
The administrative secretariat, set up as a coordinating and administrative body, was a less divisive issue. Its power was grounded entirely in the council and the assembly. The headquarters of the league were in Geneva, Switzerland, where the secretariat prepared reports and agendas. The assembly, which was made up of representatives of all the member governments, set policy and met on an annual basis. Britain, France, Italy, and Japan held permanent membership in the council, which met more regularly than the assembly. It had been expected that the United States would be the fifth permanent member of the council. At the same time, the assembly elected another four (eventually nine) temporary members to the council to serve three-year terms. All decisions taken by the council and the assembly had to be unanimous if they were to be binding. The league also included a number of subsidiary organizations. One of these, the International Labor Organization (ILO) was a specific response to the Russian Revolution. It was hoped that the ILO would appease some of the more radical tendencies within the trade union movement in various parts of the world and curtail the attractions of international communism. A Permanent Court of International Justice was also set up, as well as a range of commissions that dealt with issues such as refugees, health, drugs, and child welfare. At the time of its foundation in 1919 the league had forty-two member governments. This increased to fifty-five by 1926; however, the failure of the United States to become a member contributed significantly to the decline of the organization by the 1930s. Meanwhile, Germany only became a member in 1926 and withdrew in 1933, while the Soviet Union was only a member from 1934 to 1939. The Japanese government departed in 1933, and the Italian government ended its association with the league in 1937.
Operations and Activities
The prevention and settlement of disputes between nation-states in order to avoid another conflagration like World War I was central to the operations and activities of the league. Although it did not have a military force of its own, the league prevented or settled a number of conflicts and disputes in the 1920s. In fact, it was the activities of the league in the 1920s that made it appear to many people that it had some long-term prospects for success. The league played a major role in the resolution of a dispute over the Aaland Islands between the governments of Finland and Sweden. In 1925 it got the Greek government to withdraw from Bulgaria and resolved a border dispute between the governments of Turkey and Iraq. The league's inability to settle a conflict between the governments of Bolivia and Paraguay at the beginning of the 1930s demonstrated that the league's sphere of influence was centered on Europe. It also showed that the league's activities in Latin America were hampered by Washington's lack of support for, or membership in, the organization. During its entire history, none of the disputes that the league successfully resolved affected the interests of the Great Powers.
It is generally argued that the limitations of the league were manifested most obviously in the Manchurian crisis of the early 1930s. The Chinese government requested help from the league following Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, but the league failed to prevent the ensuing Sino-Japanese conflict. None of the other major powers in the league were able or willing to take a strong stand against Japan, and the league moved slowly on what little action it did take, following well behind the unfolding situation. By early 1932 the Japanese government had set up the puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria. It was not until February 1933 that the league discussed and adopted the report of the Lytton Commission, which had been dispatched earlier to look into the affair. Although the report was a relatively mild document, it did recommend that Manchuria be given autonomous status within China. Within a month of the adoption of the report of the Lytton Commission, the Japanese government had withdrawn from the League of Nations.
In the wake of the league's failure in Manchuria, the crisis that clearly signaled its waning influence in the 1930s was the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy in October 1935. This led to the imposition of economic sanctions on war-related materials that were, in theory, carried out by all members of the league. These sanctions soon proved insufficient. But the ability of the league, or more particularly of Britain and France, to move to more significant actions, such as closing the Suez Canal to Italian shipping and the cutting off of all oil exports to Italy, was constrained by the fear that such action would provoke war with Italy. The situation was further undermined because Britain and France tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate a secret deal with Mussolini (the Hoare-Laval Pact) that would settle the dispute peacefully by allowing Italy to retain control of some Ethiopian territory.
The End of the League of Nations
In broad terms the decline of the League of Nations in the 1930s reflected the unwillingness or inability of Britain, France, and the United States to oppose the increasingly nationalist-imperialist and militaristic trajectories of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and imperial Japan. The post-1919 international order that resulted from the Treaty of Versailles was fragile, and the league embodied that fragility. Following the Ethiopian crisis the league was more or less irrelevant. It failed to respond to the direct military intervention of Germany and Italy in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Meanwhile, Turkey's capture of part of Syria, Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia, and Mussolini's invasion of Albania in the late 1930s also produced virtually no response from the league. Its final, and largely symbolic, action was the expulsion of the Soviet Union following its invasion of Finland in 1939. The League of Nation's numerous shortcomings ensured that it never played the role in international affairs that its early promoters had hoped it would. In a somewhat circular fashion it is clear that the lack of cooperation and collective action between nation-states that encouraged political leaders to call for a League of Nations in the first place was the very thing that undermined the league once it was created. The League of Nations was dissolved in 1946. However, World War II also led to the reinvention of the League of Nations, insofar as the United Nations, which was first suggested in the Atlantic Charter in 1941 and formally established in late 1945, built on the earlier organization.
Bibliography
Armstrong, David. The Rise of the International Organisation: A Short History. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Gill, George. The League of Nations: From 1929 to 1946. Garden City Park, N.Y.: Avery, 1996.
Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Ostrower, Gary B. The League of Nations: From 1919 to 1929. Garden City Park, N.Y.: Avery, 1996.
Thorne, Christopher G. The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League, and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–1933. New York: Putnam, 1973.
Walters, F. P. A History of the League of Nations. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1952.
| Russian History Encyclopedia: League of Nations |
Formed by the victorious powers in 1919, the League of Nations was designed to enforce the Treaty of Versailles and the other peace agreements that concluded World War I. It was intended to replace secret deals and war, as means for settling international disputes, with open diplomacy and peaceful mediation. Its charter also provided a mechanism for its members to take collective action against aggression.
Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany initially were not members of the League. At the time of the League's founding, the Western powers had invaded Russia in support of the anticommunist side in the Russian civil war. The Bolshevik regime was hostile to the League, denouncing it as an anti-Soviet, counterrevolutionary conspiracy of the imperialist powers. Throughout the 1920s, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin aligned the USSR with Weimar Germany, the other outcast power, against Britain, France, and the League. German adherence to the Locarno Accords with Britain and France in 1925, and Germany's admission to the League in 1926, dealt a blow to Chicherin's policy. This Germanophile, Anglophobe, anti-League view was not shared by Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov, who advocated a more balanced policy, including cooperation with the League. Moreover, the USSR participated in the Genoa Conference in 1922 and several League-sponsored economic and arms control forums later in the decade.
Chicherin's retirement because of ill health, his replacement as foreign commissar by Litvinov, and, most importantly, the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany served to reorient Moscow's policy. The Third Reich now replaced the British Empire as the main potential enemy in Soviet thinking. In December 1933 the Politburo adopted the new Collective Security line in foreign policy, whereby the USSR sought to build an alliance of anti-Nazi powers to prevent or, if necessary, defeat German aggression. An important part of this strategy was the attempt to revive the collective security mechanism of the League. To this end, the Soviet Union joined the League in 1934, and Litvinov became the most eloquent proponent of League sanctions against German aggression. Soviet leaders also hoped that League membership would afford Russia some protection against Japanese expansionism in the Far East. Unfortunately, the League had already failed to take meaningful action against Japanese aggression in Manchuria in 1931, and it later failed to act against the Italian attack on Ethiopia in 1935. Soviet collective security policy in the League and in bilateral diplomacy faltered against the resolution of Britain and France to appease Hitler.
When Stalin could not persuade the Western powers to ally with the USSR, even in the wake of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, he abandoned the collective security line and signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Hitler on August 23, 1939. Subsequent Soviet territorial demands on Finland led to the Winter War of 1939 - 1940 and to the expulsion of the USSR from the League as an aggressor. However, Hitler's attack on Russia in 1941 accomplished what Litvinov's diplomacy could not, creating an alliance with Britain and the United States. The USSR thus became in 1945 a founding member of the United Nations, the organization that replaced the League of Nations after World War II.
Bibliography
Buzinkai, Donald I. (1967). "The Bolsheviks, the League of Nations, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1919." Soviet Studies 19:257 - 263.
Haigh, R.H.; Morris, D.S.; and Peters, A.R. (1986). Soviet Foreign Policy: The League of Nations and Europe, 1917 - 1939. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble.
Haslam, Jonathan. (1984). The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933 - 39. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Jacobson, Jan. (1994). When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
—TEDDY J. ULDRICKS
| Columbia Encyclopedia: League of Nations |
The Covenant: The Basis of the League
At the close of World War I, such prominent figures as Jan Smuts, Lord Robert Cecil, and Léon Bourgeois advocated a society of nations. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson incorporated the proposal into the Fourteen Points and was the chief figure in the establishment of the League at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The basis of the League was the Covenant, which was included in the Treaty of Versailles and the other peace treaties.
The Covenant consisted of 26 articles. Articles 1 through 7 concerned organization, providing for an assembly, composed of all member nations; a council, composed of the great powers (originally Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, later also Germany and the USSR) and of four other, nonpermanent members; and a secretariat. Both the assembly and the council were empowered to discuss "any matter within the sphere of action of the League or affecting the peace of the world." In both the assembly and the council unanimous decisions were required.
Articles 8 and 9 recognized the need for disarmament and set up military commissions. Article 10 was an attempt to guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of member states against aggression. Articles 11 through 17 provided for the establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice (see World Court), for arbitration and conciliation, and for sanctions against aggressors. The rest of the articles dealt with treaties, colonial mandates, international cooperation in humanitarian enterprises, and amendments to the Covenant.
Members
The original membership of the League included the victorious Allies of World War I (with the exception of the United States, whose Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles) and most of the neutral nations. Among later admissions to membership were Bulgaria (1920), Austria (1920), Hungary (1922), Germany (1926), Mexico (1931), Turkey (1932), and the USSR (1934). Through the efforts of Sir Eric Drummond, the first secretary-general of the League, a truly international secretariat was created. Geneva, Switzerland, was chosen as the League headquarters.
Successes and Failures
The League quickly proved its value by settling the Swedish-Finnish dispute over the Åland Islands (1920-21), guaranteeing the security of Albania (1921), rescuing Austria from economic disaster, settling the division of Upper Silesia (1922), and preventing the outbreak of war in the Balkans between Greece and Bulgaria (1925). In addition, the League extended considerable aid to refugees; it helped to suppress white slave and opium traffic; it did pioneering work in surveys of health; it extended financial aid to needy states; and it furthered international cooperation in labor relations and many other fields.
The problem of bringing its political influence to bear, especially on the great powers, soon made itself felt. Poland refused to abide by the League decision in the Vilnius dispute, and the League was forced to stand by powerlessly in the face of the French occupation of the Ruhr (1923) and Italy's occupation of Kérkira (1923). Failure to take action over the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) was a blow to the League's prestige, especially when followed by Japan's withdrawal from the League (1933). Another serious failure was the inability of the League to stop the Chaco War (1932-35; see under Gran Chaco) between Bolivia and Paraguay.
In 1935 the League completed its successful 15-year administration of the Saar territory (see Saarland) by conducting a plebiscite under the supervision of an international military force. But even this success was not sufficient to offset the failure of the Disarmament Conference, Germany's withdrawal from the League (1933), and Italy's successful attack on Ethiopia in defiance of the League's economic sanctions (1935). In 1936, Adolf Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland and denounced the Treaty of Versailles; in 1938 he seized Austria.
Faced by threats to international peace from all sides-the Spanish civil war, Japan's resumption of war against China (1937), and finally the appeasement of Hitler at Munich (1938)-the League collapsed. German claims on Danzig (see Gdańsk), where the League commissioner had been reduced to impotence, led to the outbreak of World War II. The last important act of the League came in Dec., 1939, when it expelled the USSR for its attack on Finland.
In 1940 the League secretariat in Geneva was reduced to a skeleton staff; some of the technical services were removed to the United States and Canada. The allied International Labor Organization continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the United Nations. In 1946 the League dissolved itself, and its services and real estate (notably the Palais des Nations in Geneva) were transferred to the United Nations. The League's chief success lay in providing the first pattern of permanent international organization, a pattern on which much of the United Nations was modeled. Its failures were due as much to the indifference of the great powers, which preferred to reserve important matters for their own decisions, as to weaknesses of organization.
Bibliography
See F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (2 vol., 1952; repr. 1960); W. Schiffer, Legal Community of Mankind (1954, repr. 1972); G. Scott, The Rise and Fall of the League of Nations (1974); F. S. Northedge, The League of Nations (1986); H. F. Margulies, The Mild Reservationists and the League of Nations (1989).
| Intelligence Encyclopedia: League of Nations |
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared that the nation's intention was to fight in the final war to ensure the survival and strength of democracy in the Western world. After the war, Wilson encouraged the victorious Allied powers to establish an international organization that would mediate conflict through diplomacy and promote peace. Wilson's idea led to the creation of the League of Nations, and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. The League of Nations was short lived, and plagued with problems from its inception. The organization did, however, lay the foundations for international cooperative efforts in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Despite Wilson's efforts to gain public support for the League of Nations, the United States government failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, the final agreement of the ending of World War I, and therefore, did not join the League. The lack of United States participation and financial backing forever plagued the League, hampering its efficacy and political influence. United States abstention from the League drew ire from some nations, and made others suspicious of the organization itself. Britain expressed dissatisfaction with the League, but ratified the treaty with the League of Nations provisions simply to avoid extended negotiation on reforming the already delayed peace settlement. Despite U.S. reservations, over 30 other nations joined the League in 1920 when the Treaty of Versailles went into effect on January 10: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Hejaz, Honduras, Italy, India, Japan, Liberia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serb-Croat-Sloven State (later, Yugoslavia), Siam, South Africa, and Uruguay.
The League was headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, because of the nations long-standing policy of declared neutrality. Though the Treaty of Versailles provided for the establishment of the diplomatic entity, it did not outline its organization. Its eventual structure took shape over the first two years of representative meetings of member nations. Eventually, the League came to be composed of three principal organs and several technical organizations.
The main body of the League of Nations was the assembly. Composed of representatives from each member states, the assembly met annually. Each resolution, or legal advisory, passed by the assembly was subsequently published.
The council was a smaller body of representatives separate from, but still accountable to, the assembly. Membership on the council varied, and included a mixture of permanent and non-permanent seats. The mission of the council was to mediate and settle international disputes. The League of Nations charter stipulated that the council meet every four years, or as needed in the event of a crisis. In the League of Nation's 20-year history, the council met 107 times.
The secretary-general directed the League of Nations, serving as its chief negotiator and the leader of the assembly. The office of the secretary-general, the secretariat, carried out the routine office work of the league.
In addition to the principal organs of the league, several technical committees advised the assembly and council on international policy and special concerns. The league maintained a health organization, an economic and financial organization, the Opium Advisory Committee, and the Permanent Mandates Commission, in addition to several other temporary groups.
In its two-decade tenure, the League of Nations produced the first truly international laws and cooperative initiatives. The League Health Organization promoted safe hospital practices, vaccination campaigns, and public health information campaigns to curb the spread of venereal disease and tuberculosis. In response to the horrors of poison gas on the World War I battlefield, member nations negotiated bans on chemical weaponry. The rules of engagement for war were modified and codified for the modern era in the terms of the Geneva Convention. The league prompted member states to adhere to its terms, but to avoid war if possible.
In the mid-1930s, the league became increasingly ineffective. Though several nations attempted to halt the spread of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism through diplomacy, their efforts failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The league met for the last time during the war, and was dissolved by its member states on April 18, 1946.
Despite its limitations, the League of Nations established modern, international diplomatic protocol and fostered increasing cooperation between large and small nations on both sides of the Atlantic. Participation in the league drew some nations out of isolationism and propelled others onto the international economic and political stage. After the dissolution of the League of Nations, another international and legal entity, the United Nations, emerged. The atrocities of the Holocaust and a rise in war crimes prompted the international community to establish a body that could define and administer international law. The United States joined the United Nations as a charter member, officially ending its remnant isolationist policies. The United Nations assumed the duties of the former League of Nations and continues to expand its role in international diplomacy.
Further Reading
Books
Knock, Thomas A. To End All Wars, reprint ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.
| Law Encyclopedia: League of Nations |
An international confederation of countries, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, that existed from 1920 to 1946, its creation following World War I and its dissolution following World War II.
Though the League of Nations was a flawed and generally ineffective organization, many of its functions and offices were transferred to the United Nations, which has benefited from the hard lessons the league learned.
President Woodrow Wilson, of the United States, was the architect of the League of Nations. When the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, Wilson sought to end a war that had raged for three years and to begin constructing a new framework for international cooperation. On January 8, 1918, he delivered an address to Congress that named fourteen points to be used as the guide for a peace settlement. The fourteenth point called for a general association of nations that would guarantee political independence and territorial integrity for all countries.
Following the November 9, 1918, armistice that ended the war, President Wilson led the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Wilson was the only representative of the Great Powers — which included Great Britain, France, and Italy — who truly wanted an international organization. His power and influence were instrumental in establishing the League of Nations.
Although Wilson was the architect of the league, he was unable to secure U.S. Senate ratification of the peace treaty that included it. He was opposed by isolationists of both major political parties who argued that the United States should not interfere with European affairs, and by Republicans who did not want to commit the United States to supporting the league financially. The treaty was modified several times, but was nevertheless voted down for the last time in March 1920.
Despite the absence of the United States, the League of Nations held its first meeting on November 15, 1920, with forty-two nations represented. The constitution of the league was called a covenant. It contained twenty-six articles that served as operating rules for the league.
The league was organized into three main branches. The council was the main peacekeeping agency, with a membership that varied from eight to fourteen members during its existence. France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union held permanent seats during the years they were members of the league. The remainder of the seats were held by smaller countries on a rotating basis. Peacekeeping recommendations had to be made by a unanimous vote.
The assembly was composed of all members of the league, and each member country had one vote. The assembly controlled the league's budget, elected the temporary council members, and made amendments to the covenant. A two-thirds majority vote was required on most matters. When a threat to peace was the issue, a majority vote plus the unanimous consent of the council was needed to recommend action.
The secretariat was the administrative branch of the league. It was headed by a secretary general, who was nominated by the council and approved by the assembly. The secretariat consisted of over six hundred officials, who aided peacekeeping work and served as staff to special study commissions and to numerous international organizations established by the league to improve trade, finance, transportation, communication, health, and science.
President Wilson and others who had sought the establishment of the league had hoped to end the system of interlocking foreign alliances that had drawn the European powers into World War I. The league was to promote collective security, in which the security of each league member was guaranteed by the entire league membership. This goal was undermined by the covenant because the council and the assembly lacked the power to order members to help an attacked nation. It was left up to each country to decide whether a threat to peace warranted its intervention. Because of this voluntary process, the league lacked the authority to quickly and decisively resolve armed conflict.
This defect was revealed in the 1930s. When Japan invaded Manchuria in 1933, the League of Nations could only issue condemnations. Then, in 1935, Italy, under Benito Mussolini, invaded Ethiopia. Ethiopia appeared before the assembly and asked for assistance. Britain and France, unwilling to risk war, refused to employ an oil embargo that would have hurt the Italian war effort. In May 1936 Italy conquered the African country.
The league also lost key member states in the 1930s. Japan left in 1933, following the Manchurian invasion. Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, also left in 1933, following the league's refusal to end arms limitations imposed on Germany after World War I. Italy withdrew in 1937, and the Soviet Union was expelled in 1939 for invading Finland.
The beginning of World War II, on September 1, 1939, marked the beginning of the end for the League of Nations. Collective security had failed. During the war the secretariat was reduced to a skeleton staff in Geneva, and some functions were transferred to the United States and Canada. With the creation of the United Nations on October 24, 1945, the League of Nations became superfluous. In 1946 the league voted to dissolve and transferred much of its property and organization to the United Nations.
The United Nations followed the general structure of the league, establishing a security council, a general assembly, and a secretariat. It had the benefit of U.S. membership and U.S. financial support, two vital elements denied the League of Nations.
| History Dictionary: League of Nations |
An international organization established after World War I under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. The League, the forerunner of the United Nations, brought about much international cooperation on health, labor problems, refugee affairs, and the like. It was too weak, however, to prevent the great powers from going to war in 1939.
| Wikipedia: League of Nations |
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The League of Nations (LoN) was an inter-governmental organization founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919–1920. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The League's goals included upholding the new found Rights of Man such as right of non whites, rights of women, rights of soldiers, disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global quality of life. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and so depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to economic sanctions which the League ordered, or provide an army, when needed, for the League to use. However, they were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could also hurt the League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them. When during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, the League accused Benito Mussolini's soldiers of targeting Red Cross medical tents, Mussolini responded that Ethiopians were not fully human, therefore the human rights laws did not apply. Benito Mussolini stated that "The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out."[1]
After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. In May 1933 the League was powerless to convince Hitler that Franz Bernheim, a Jew, was protected under the minority clauses established by the League in 1919 (that all minorities were fully human and held equal rights among all men). Hitler claimed these clauses violated Germany's sovereignty. Germany withdrew from the League soon to be followed by many other totalitarian and militaristic nations. The onset of World War II showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to avoid any future world war. The United Nations replaced it after the end of the war and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the League.
The concept of a peaceful community of nations had been outlined as far back as 1795, when Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch[2] outlined the idea of a league of nations that would control conflict and promote peace between states.[3] There, Kant argues for establishment of a peaceful world community not in a sense that there be a global government but in the hope that each state would declare itself as a free state that respects its citizens and welcomes foreign visitors as fellow rational beings. It is in this rationalization that a union of free states would promote peaceful society worldwide, therefore there can be a perpetual peace binded by the international community.[4] International co-operation to promote collective security originated in the Concert of Europe that developed after the Napoleonic Wars in the nineteenth century in an attempt to maintain the status quo between European states and so avoid war.[5][6] This period also saw the development of international law with the first Geneva conventions establishing laws about humanitarian relief during war and the international Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 governing rules of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes.[7][8] The forerunner of the League of Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), was formed by peace activists William Randal Cremer and Frederic Passy in 1889. The organization was international in scope with a third of the members of parliament, in the 24 countries with parliaments, serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its aims were to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means and arbitration and annual conferences were held to help governments refine the process of international arbitration. The IPU's structure consisted of a Council headed by a President which would later be reflected in the structure of the League.[9]
At the start of the twentieth century two power blocs emerged through alliances between the European Great Powers. It was these alliances that came into effect at the start of the First World War in 1914, drawing all the major European powers into the war. This was the first major war in Europe between industrialized countries and the first time in Western Europe the results of industrialization (for example mass production) had been dedicated to war. The result of this industrial warfare was an unprecedented casualty level with eight and a half million members of armed services dead, an estimated 21 million wounded, and approximately 10 million civilian deaths.[10][11] By the time the fighting ended in November 1918, the war had had a profound impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe and inflicting psychological and physical damage on the continent.[12] Anti-war sentiment rose across the world; the First World War was described as "the war to end all wars",[13][14] and its possible causes were vigorously investigated. The causes identified included arms races, alliances, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. The perceived remedies to these were seen as the creation of an international organisation whose aim was to prevent future war through disarmament, open diplomacy, international co-operation, restrictions on the right to wage wars, and penalties that made war unattractive to nations.[15]
While the First World War was still underway, a number of governments and groups had already started developing plans to change the way international relations were carried out in order to prevent a repetition of the war.[13] United States President Woodrow Wilson and his advisor Colonel Edward M. House enthusiastically promoted the idea of the League as a means of avoiding any repetition of the bloodshed seen in World War I, and the creation of the League was a centerpiece of Wilson's Fourteen Points for Peace.[16] Specifically the final point provided: "A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."[17]
Before drafting the specific terms of his peace deal, Wilson recruited a team led by Colonel House to compile whatever information deemed pertinent in assessing Europe’s geo-political situation. In early January, 1918, Wilson summoned House to Washington and the two began hammering out, in complete secrecy, the President’s first address on the League of Nations which was delivered to an unsuspecting Congress on January 8, 1918.[18]
Wilson's final plans for the League were strongly influenced by the South African Prime Minister, Jan Christiaan Smuts. In 1918 Smuts had published a treatise entitled The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion. According to F.S. Crafford's biography on Smuts, Wilson adopted "both the ideas and the style" of Smuts.[19]
On July 8, 1919, Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States and embarked on a nation-wide campaign to secure the support of the American people for their country’s entry into the League. On July 10, Wilson addressed the Senate declaring that “a new role and a new responsibility have come to this great nation that we honour and which we would all wish to lift to yet higher levels of service and achievement.” Positive reception, particularly from Republicans, was scarce at best.[20]
The Paris Peace Conference, convened to build a lasting peace after World War I, approved the proposal to create the League of Nations (French: Société des Nations, German: Völkerbund) on 25 January 1919.[21] The Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by a special commission, and the League was established by Part I of the Treaty of Versailles. On 28 June 1919,[22][23] 44 states signed the Covenant, including 31 states which had taken part in the war on the side of the Triple Entente or joined it during the conflict. Despite Wilson's efforts to establish and promote the League, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919,[24] the United States did not join the League. Opposition in the U.S. Senate, particularly from Republican politicians Henry Cabot Lodge and William E. Borah, together with Wilson's refusal to compromise, ensured that the United States would not ratify the Covenant.
The League held its first council meeting in Paris on 16 January 1920, six days after the Versailles Treaty came into force.[25] In November, the headquarters of the League moved to Geneva, where the first General Assembly was held on 15 November 1920[26] with representatives from 41 nations in attendance.
The official languages of the League of Nations were French, English[27] and Spanish (from 1920). The League considered adopting Esperanto as their working language and actively encouraging its use but neither option was ever adopted.[28] In 1921, there was a proposal by Lord Robert Cecil to introduce Esperanto into state schools of member nations and a report was commissioned to investigate this.[29] When the report was presented two years later it recommended the teaching of Esperanto in schools, a proposal that 11 delegates accepted.[28] The strongest opposition came from the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux, partially in order to protect the French Language which he argued was already the international language.[30] This opposition meant the report was accepted apart from the section that approved Esperanto in schools.[31]
The League of Nations had neither an official flag nor logo. Proposals for adopting an official symbol were made during the League's beginning in 1920, but the member states never reached agreement. However, League of Nations organizations used varying logos and flags (or none at all) in their own operations. An international contest was held in 1929 to find a design, which again failed to produce a symbol.[32] One of the reasons for this failure may have been the fear by the member states that the power of the supranational organization might supersede their own. Finally, in 1939, a semi-official emblem emerged: two five-pointed stars within a blue pentagon. The pentagon and the five-pointed stars were supposed to symbolize the five continents and the five races of mankind. In a bow on top and at the bottom, the flag had the names in English (League of Nations) and French (Société des Nations). This flag was used on the building of the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940.[32]
The League had four principal organs, a secretariat (headed by the General Secretary and based in Geneva), a Council, an Assembly and a Permanent Court of International Justice.[33] The League also had numerous agencies and commissions. Authorization for any action required both a unanimous vote by the Council and a majority vote in the Assembly.
The staff of the League's secretariat was responsible for preparing the agenda for the Council and Assembly and publishing reports of the meetings and other routine matters, effectively acting as the civil service for the League. The secretariat was often considered to be too small to handle all of the league administrative affairs. The League of Nations' Assembly was a meeting of all the member states, with each state allowed up to three representatives and one vote.[34] The Assembly met in Geneva and, after its initial sessions in 1920,[35] sessions were held once a year in September.[34]
The League Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's business.[36] The Council began with four permanent members (Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan) and four non-permanent members which were elected by the Assembly for a three year period.[37] The first four non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece and Spain. The United States was meant to be the fifth permanent member, but the US Senate voted on 19 March 1920 against the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, thus preventing American participation in the League.
The composition of the Council was subsequently changed a number of times. The number of non-permanent members was first increased to six on 22 September 1922, and then to nine on 8 September 1926. Werner Dankwort of Germany pushed for his home country to join the league which they eventually did in 1926. Germany became the fifth permanent member of the Council, giving the Council a total of fifteen members. Later, after Germany and Japan both left the League, the number of non-permanent seats was increased from nine to eleven.
The Council met, on average, five times a year and in extraordinary sessions when required. In total, 107 public sessions were held between 1920 and 1939.
The League oversaw the Permanent Court of International Justice and several other agencies and commissions created to deal with pressing international problems. These included the Disarmament Commission, the Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, the Mandates Commission, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (precursor to UNESCO), the Permanent Central Opium Board, the Commission for Refugees, and the Slavery Commission. Several of these institutions were transferred to the United Nations after the Second World War; the International Labour Organization, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the International Court of Justice), and the Health Organization (restructured as the World Health Organization) all became UN institutions.
The League's health organization had three bodies, a Health Bureau, containing permanent officials of the League, an executive section the General Advisory Council or Conference consisting of medical experts, and a Health Committee. The Committee's purpose was to conduct inquiries, oversee the operation of the League's health work, and get work ready to be presented to the Council.[38] This body focused on ending leprosy, malaria and yellow fever, the latter two by starting an international campaign to exterminate mosquitoes. The Health Organization also worked successfully with the government of the Soviet Union to prevent typhus epidemics including organising a large education campaign about the disease.[39]
In 1919, the International Labour Organization (ILO) was created as part of the Versailles Treaty and became part of the League's operations.[40] Its first director was Albert Thomas.[41] The ILO successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint,[42] and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight hour working week. It also worked to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen.[40] The organization continued to exist after the end of the League, becoming an agency of the United Nations in 1946.[43]
The League wanted to regulate the drug trade and established the Permanent Central Opium Board to supervise the statistical control system introduced by the second International Opium Convention that mediated the production, manufacture, trade and retail of opium and its by-products. The Board also established a system of import certificates and export authorizations for the legal international trade in narcotics.[44]
The Slavery Commission sought to eradicate slavery and slave trading across the world, and fought forced prostitution.[45] Its main success was through pressing the governments who administered mandated countries to end slavery in those countries. The League secured a commitment from Ethiopia to end slavery as a condition of membership in 1926, and worked with Liberia to abolish forced labour and inter-tribal slavery.[45] It succeeded in gaining the emancipation of 200,000 slaves in Sierra Leone and organized raids against slave traders in its efforts to stop the practice of forced labour in Africa.[citation needed] It also succeeded in reducing the death rate of workers constructing the Tanganyika railway from 55% to 4%. Records were kept to control slavery, prostitution, and the trafficking of women and children.[46]
Led by Fridtjof Nansen, the Commission for Refugees looked after the interests of refugees including overseeing their repatriation and, when necessary resettlement.[47] At the end of the First World War there were two to three million ex-prisoners of war dispersed throughout Russia,[47] within two years of the commission's foundation, in 1920, it had helped 425,000 of them return home.[48] It established camps in Turkey in 1922 to aid the country with a refugee crisis it was dealing with, helping to prevent disease and hunger. It also established the Nansen passport as a means of identification for stateless peoples.[49]
The Committee for the Study of the Legal Status of Women sought to make an inquiry into the status of women all over the world. It was formed in April 1938, and dissolved in early 1939. Committee members included Mme. P. Bastid (France), M. de Ruelle (Belgium), Mme. Anka Godjevac (Yugoslavia), Mr. H. C. Gutteridge (Great Britain), Mlle. Kerstin Hesselgren (Sweden),[50] Ms. Dorothy Kenyon (United States), M. Paul Sebastyen (Hungary) and Secretariat Mr. Hugh McKinnon Wood (Great Britain).
Of the League's 42 founding members, 23 (or 24, counting Free France) remained members until it was dissolved in 1946. In the founding year, six other states joined, only two of which remained members throughout the League's existence. An additional 15 countries joined in later years.
The largest number of member states was 58, between 28 September 1934 (when Ecuador joined) and 23 February 1935 (when Paraguay withdrew). At this time, only Costa Rica (22 January 1925), Brazil (14 June 1926), the Empire of Japan (27 March 1933), and Germany (19 September 1933) had withdrawn citing a diplomatic disadvantage due to inferior powers.
The Soviet Union only became a member on 18 September 1934,[51] when it joined to antagonise Germany (which had left the year before),[52] and was expelled from the League on 14 December 1939[51] for aggression against Finland.[52] In expelling the Soviet Union, the League broke its own norms; only 7 of 15 members of the Council voted for the expulsion (Great Britain, France, Belgium, Bolivia, Egypt, South Africa, and the Dominican Republic), which was not the majority of votes required by the Covenant to do so. Three of these members were chosen as members of the Council the day before the voting (South Africa, Bolivia, and Egypt).[52] This was one of the League's final acts before it practically ceased functioning[53] due to the Second World War.[54]
Egypt was the last state to join the League (26 May 1937). The first member to withdraw from the League after its founding was Costa Rica on 22 January 1925; having joined on 16 December 1920, this also makes it the member to have most quickly withdrawn from the League after joining. The last member to withdraw from the League before its dissolution was Luxembourg on 30 August 1942. Brazil was the first founding member to leave (14 June 1926) and Haiti was the last (April 1942).
Iraq, which joined in 1932, was the first member of the league that had previously been a League of Nations Mandate.[55]
League of Nations Mandates were established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. These territories were former colonies of the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire that were placed under the supervision of the League following World War I. The Permanent Mandates Commission supervised League of Nations mandates, and also organised plebiscites in disputed territories so that residents could decide which country they would join. There were three Mandate classifications.
The "A" Mandates (applied to parts of the old Ottoman Empire) were 'certain communities' that had
...reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.[56]
– Article 22, The Covenant of the League of Nations
The "B" Mandates were applied to the former German Colonies that the League took responsibility for after the First World War. These were described as 'peoples' that the League said were
...at such a stage that the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic and the liquor traffic, and the prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defence of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other Members of the League.[56]
– Article 22, The Covenant of the League of Nations
South-West Africa and certain of the South Pacific Islands were administrated by League members under a C Mandate. These were classified as 'territories'
...which, owing to the sparseness of their population, or their small size, or their remoteness from the centres of civilisation, or their geographical contiguity to the territory of the Mandatory, and other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory, subject to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population."[56]
– Article 22, The Covenant of the League of Nations
The territories were governed by "Mandatory Powers", such as the United Kingdom in the case of the Mandate of Palestine and the Union of South Africa in the case of South-West Africa, until the territories were deemed capable of self-government. There were fourteen mandate territories divided up among the six Mandatory Powers of the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia and Japan. With the exception of the Kingdom of Iraq, which joined the League on 3 October 1932, these territories did not begin to gain their independence until after the Second World War, a process that did not end until 1990. Following the demise of the League, most of the remaining mandates became United Nations Trust Territories.
In addition to the Mandates, the League itself governed the Saarland for 15 years, before it was returned to Germany following a plebiscite, and the free city of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) from 15 November 1920 to 1 September 1939.
The aftermath of World War I left many issues to be settled between nations, including the exact position of national boundaries and which country particular regions would join. Most of these questions were handled by the victorious Allied Powers in bodies such as the Allied Supreme Council. The Allies tended to refer only particularly difficult matters to the League. This meant that, during the first three years of the 1920s, the League played little part in resolving the turmoil that resulted from the war. The questions the League considered in its early years included those designated by the Paris Peace treaties.[57]
As the League developed, its role expanded, and by the middle of the 1920s, it became the centre of international activity. This change can be seen in the relationship between the League and non-members. The United States and Russia, for example, increasingly worked with the League. During the second half of the 1920s, France, Britain and Germany were all using the League of Nations as the focus of their diplomatic activity and each of their foreign secretaries attended League meetings at Geneva during this period. They also used the League's machinery to try to improve relations and settle their differences.[58]
The Allied Powers referred the problem of Upper Silesia to the League after they had been unable to resolve the territorial dispute.[59] After the First World War, Poland laid claim to Upper Silesia, which had been part of Prussia. The Treaty of Versailles had recommended a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should be part of Germany or Poland. Complaints about the attitude of the German authorities led to rioting and eventually to the first two Silesian Uprisings (1919 and 1920). A plebiscite took place on 20 March 1921 with 59.6% (around 500,000) of the votes cast in favour of joining Germany, but Poland claimed the conditions surrounding it had been unfair. This result led to the Third Silesian Uprising in 1921.[60] On 12 August 1921, the League was asked to settle the matter, and the Council created a commission with representatives from Belgium, Brazil, China and Spain to study the situation.[61] The committee recommended that Upper Silesia should be divided between Poland and Germany according to the preferences shown in the plebiscite and that the two sides should decide the details of the interaction between the two areas. For example, whether goods should pass freely over the border due to the economic and industrial interdependency of the two areas.[62] In November 1921 a conference was held in Geneva to negotiate a convention between Germany and Poland. A final settlement was reached, after five meetings, in which most of the area was given to Germany but with the Polish section containing the majority of the region's mineral resources and much of its industry. When this agreement became public in May 1922, bitter resentment was expressed in Germany, but the treaty was still ratified by both countries. The settlement produced peace in the area lasting until the run up to the Second World War.[61]
The frontiers of Albania had not been set during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, being left to the League to be decided, but had not yet been determined by September 1921. This created an unstable situation with Greek troops repeatedly crossing into Albanian territory on military operations in the south and Yugoslavian forces engaged, after clashes with Albanian tribesmen, far into the northern part of the country. The League sent a commission of representatives from various powers to the region and in November 1921, the League decided that the frontiers of Albania should be the same as they had been in 1913 with three minor changes that favoured Yugoslavia. Yugoslav forces withdrew a few weeks later, albeit under protest.[63]
The borders of Albania again become the cause of international conflict when Italian General Enrico Tellini and four of his assistants were ambushed and killed on 24 August 1923 while marking out the new newly decided border between Greece and Albania. Italian leader Benito Mussolini was incensed, and demanded that a commission should be set up to investigate the incident and that its enquires should be completed within five days. Whatever the results of the enquiry, Mussolini insisted that the Greek government should pay Italy fifty million lira reparations. The Greeks said they would not pay unless it was proved that the crime was committed by Greeks.[64]
Mussolini sent a warship to shell the Greek island of Corfu and Italian forces occupied Corfu on 31 August 1923. This contravened the League's covenant so Greece appealed to the League to deal with the situation. The Allies, however, agreed (under Mussolini's insistence) that the Conference of Ambassadors should be responsible for resolving the dispute because it was the conference that had appointed General Tellini. The League Council examined the dispute but then passed their findings to the Council of Ambassadors to make the final decision. The conference accepted most of the League's recommendations forcing Greece to pay fifty million lira to Italy even though those who committed the crime were never discovered.[65] Mussolini was able to leave Corfu in triumph.
Åland is a collection of around 6,500 islands midway between Sweden and Finland. The islands are exclusively Swedish speaking, but in 1809, Sweden had lost both Finland and the Åland Islands to Imperial Russia. In December 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian October Revolution, Finland declared independence, and most of the Ålanders wished the islands to become part of Sweden again;[66] the Finnish government, however, felt that the islands were part of their new nation, as the Russians had included Åland in the Grand Duchy of Finland formed in 1809. By 1920, the dispute had escalated to such a level that there was a danger of war. The British government referred the problem to the League's Council, but Finland did not let the League intervene as they considered it an internal matter. The League created a small panel to decide if the League should investigate the matter and, with an affirmative response, a neutral commission was created.[66] In June 1921, the League announced its decision; the islands should remain a part of Finland but with guaranteed protection of the islanders, including demilitarization. With Sweden's reluctant agreement, this became the first European international agreement concluded directly through the League.[67]
The Republic of Hatay was a transitional political entity that formally existed from September 7, 1938 to June 29, 1939 in the territory of the Sanjak of Alexandretta of the French Mandate of Syria. With League of Nations oversight, the state was annexed by the Republic of Turkey on June 29, 1939 and transformed into the Turkish Hatay Province (excluding districts of Erzin, Dörtyol, Hassa).
The port city of Memel (now Klaipėda) and the surrounding area, with a predominantly German population, were under Allied control after the end of the World War I. The area had been awarded to Lithuania by Article 99 of the Treaty of Versailles but the French and Polish governments favoured turning Memel into an international city. By 1923, control of the area had still not been transferred to Lithuania, prompting Lithuanian forces to invade in January 1923 and seize the port. After the Allies failed to reach an agreement with Lithuania, they referred the matter to the League of Nations. In December 1923, the League Council appointed a Commission of Inquiry to investigate. The Commission chose to cede Memel to Lithuania and give the area autonomous rights. This decision was approved by the League Council on 14 March 1924 and then by the Allied Powers and Lithuania.[68]
The League resolved a dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over the control of the former Ottoman province of Mosul in 1926. According to the British, who were awarded a League of Nations A-mandate over Iraq in 1920 and therefore represented Iraq in its foreign affairs, Mosul belonged to Iraq; on the other hand, the new Turkish republic claimed the province as part of its historic heartland. A League of Nations' Commission of Inquiry with Belgian, Hungarian and Swedish members was sent to the region in 1924 to study the case and found that the people of Mosul did not want to be part of Turkey or Iraq but if they had to choose would pick Iraq.[69] In 1925, the commission recommended that the region stay part of Iraq, under the condition that the British would hold the mandate over Iraq for another 25 years, to assure the autonomous rights of the Kurdish population. The League Council adopted the recommendation and it decided on 16 December 1925 to award Mosul to Iraq. Although Turkey had accepted the League of Nations' arbitration in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, it rejected the League's decision questioning the Council's authority. The matter was referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice which ruled that when the Council made a unanimous decision it must be accepted. Nonetheless, Britain, Iraq and Turkey ratified a separate treaty on 5 June 1926, that mostly followed the decision of the League Council and also assigned Mosul to Iraq. It was agreed, however, that Iraq could still apply for League membership within 25 years and that the mandate would end upon its admittance.[70][71]
After World War I, Poland and Lithuania both regained their independence but there was disagreement about the frontiers between the countries.[72] During the Polish-Soviet War, Lithuania signed a peace treaty with the Soviet Union that laid out Lithuania's frontiers. This agreement gave control of the city of Vilnius (Lithuanian: Vilnius, Polish: Wilno), the old Lithuanian capital, to Lithuania which became the country's seat of government.[73] This heightened tension between Lithuania and Poland led to fears that they would go to war, and on 7 October 1920 the League negotiated a short-lived armistice[72] The majority of the population of the city of Vilnius during the inter-war era were Polish and on 9 October 1920 General Zeligowski with a Polish military force took the city and claimed that the Government of Central Lithuania was now under their protection.[72]
Lithuania requested the League's assistance and in response, the League Council called for Poland's withdrawal from the area. The Polish Government indicated they would comply with the League, but rather than leaving, it reinforced the city with more Polish troops.[74] This prompted the League to decide that the future of Vilnius should be determined by its residents in a plebiscite and that the Polish forces should withdraw and be replaced by an international force organised by the League. Several League nations, included France and Britain, started preparing troops to be sent to the area as part of the international force. At the end of 1920, hostilities between Poland and Lithuania increased again but early in 1921, the Polish government began to seek a peaceful settlement. It agreed to support the League's plan for the area, withdraw Polish troops and co-operate with the plebiscite. The League, however, now faced opposition from Lithuania and the Soviet Union, who opposed any international force in Lithuania. In March 1921, the League abandoned plans for the plebiscite and the international force, and returned to attempting to facilitate a negotiated settlement between the two sides.[75] Vilnius and the surrounding area were formally annexed by Poland in March 1922, and on 14 March 1923, the Allied Conference set the frontier between Lithuania and Poland leaving Vilnius within Poland.[76] Lithuanian authorities refused to accept the decision, and officially remained in a state of war with Poland until 1927.[77] It was not until the 1938 Polish ultimatum that Lithuania restored diplomatic relations with Poland, ending the war, and thus de facto accepted the borders of its neighbour.[78]
There were several border conflicts between Colombia and Peru in the early part of the 20th century, and in 1922, their governments signed the Salomón-Lozano Treaty to try and resolve these conflicts.[79] As part of this treaty, the border town Leticia and its surrounding area were ceded from Peru to Colombia, giving Colombia access to the Amazon River.[80] On 1 September 1932, business leaders from the Peruvian rubber and sugar industries who had lost land when the area was given to Colombia organised an armed takeover of Leticia.[81] At first, the Peruvian government did not recognise the military takeover but Peru's President Luis Sánchez Cerro decided to resist a Colombian re-occupation. The Peruvian army occupied Leticia, resulting in an armed conflict between the two nations.[82] After months of diplomatic wrangling, the governments accepted mediation by the League of Nations, and their representatives presented their cases before the League's Council. A provisional peace agreement, signed by both parties in May 1933, provided for the League to assume control of the disputed territory while bilateral negotiations proceeded.[83] In May 1934, a final peace agreement was signed, resulting in the return of Leticia to Colombia, a formal apology from Peru for the 1932 invasion, demilitarization of the area around Leticia, free navigation on the Amazon and Putumayo Rivers, and a pledge of non-aggression.
Saar was a province, formed from parts of Prussia and the Rhenish Palatinate, that was established and placed under League control by the Treaty of Versailles. A plebiscite was to be held after fifteen years of League rule to determine whether the region should belong to Germany or France. When the referendum was held in 1935, 90.3% of votes supported becoming part of Germany[84][85] On 17 January 1935, the territory's re-integration with Germany was approved by the League Council.
In addition to territorial disputes, the League also tried to intervene in other conflicts between (and even within) nations. Among its successes were its attempts to combat the international trade in opium and sexual slavery, and its work to alleviate the plight of refugees, particularly in Turkey in the period to 1926. One of its innovations in this latter area was the 1922 introduction of the Nansen passport, which was the first internationally recognized identity card for stateless refugees. Many of the League's successes were accomplished by its various agencies and commissions.
After an incident between sentries on the border between Greece and Bulgaria in October 1925, fighting began between the two countries.[86] Three days after the initial incident, Greek troops invaded Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government ordered its troops to provide only token resistance, and evacuated between ten thousand and fifteen thousand people from the border region, trusting the League to settle the dispute.[87] The League did indeed condemn the Greek invasion, and called for both Greek withdrawal and compensation to Bulgaria. Greece complied, but complained about the disparity between their treatment and that of Italy after the Corfu incident.
Following accusations of forced labor on the massive American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation.[88] The commission created to investigate was jointly appointed by the League, the United States of America, and Liberia.[89] In 1930, a report by the League confirmed slavery and forced labor was taking place. The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labor and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans. The Liberian government outlawed forced labor and slavery and asked for American help, this created anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D.B. King and his vice-president.[89] The League then threatened to establish a trusteeship over Liberia unless reforms were carried out, enacting these reforms then became the central focus of President Edwin Barclay.[citation needed]
The Mukden Incident, also known as the "Manchurian Incident" or the "Far Eastern Crisis", was one of the League's major setbacks and acted as the catalyst for Japan's withdrawal from the organization. Under the terms of an agreed lease, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between the two countries, in the Chinese region of Manchuria.[90] In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by officers and troops of the Japanese Kwantung Army[91][92] as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria.[91][93] The Japanese army, however, claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to the civilian government's orders[92]) occupied the entire region of Manchuria. They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 set up a puppet government with Pu Yi, the former emperor of China, as its executive head.[94] Internationally, this new country was recognised only by the governments of Italy and Germany; the rest of the world still considered Manchuria legally part of China. In 1932, Japanese air and sea forces bombarded the Chinese city of Shanghai, sparking the January 28 Incident.
The League of Nations agreed to a request for help from the Chinese government, but the long voyage by ship delayed League officials from investigating the matter. When they arrived, the officials were confronted with Chinese assertions that the Japanese had invaded unlawfully, while the Japanese claimed they were acting to keep peace in the area. Despite Japan's high standing in the League, the subsequent Lytton Report declared Japan to be the aggressor and demanded Manchuria be returned to the Chinese. Before the report could be voted on by the Assembly, Japan announced its intention to push further into China. The report passed 42-1 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voted against), but instead of withdrawing its troops from China, Japan withdrew its membership from the League.
According to the Covenant, the League should have responded by placing economic sanctions on Japan, or gathered an army and declared war. Neither of these actions was undertaken, however. The threat of economic sanctions would have been almost useless because the United States was not a League member. Any economic sanctions the League had placed on its member states would have been ineffective, as a country barred from trading with other member states could simply turn and trade with the United States. The League could have assembled an army, but major powers like Britain and France were too preoccupied with their own affairs, such as keeping control of their extensive colonies, especially after the turmoil of World War I. Japan was therefore left in control of Manchuria, until the Soviet Union's Red Army took over the area and returned it to China at the end of World War II.
The League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region of South America. Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River which would have given one of the two landlocked countries access to the Atlantic Ocean,[95] and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum.[96] Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932, when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio López at Lake Pitiantuta.[97] Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League did not take action when the Pan-American conference offered to mediate instead. The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million.[98] It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control over most of the region.[99] This was recognized in a 1938 truce by which Paraguay was awarded three-quarters of the Chaco Boreal.
In October 1935, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent 400,000 troops to invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia).[100] Marshal Pietro Badoglio led the campaign from November 1935, ordering bombing, the use of chemical weapons like mustard gas, and the poisoning of water supplies, against targets which included undefended villages and medical facilities.[100][101] The modern Italian Army defeated the poorly armed Abyssinians, and captured Addis Ababa in May 1936, forcing Emperor Haile Selassie to flee.[102]
The League of Nations condemned Italy's aggression and imposed economic sanctions in November 1935, but the sanctions were largely ineffective since they did not ban the sale of oil or close the Suez Canal (controlled by Britain).[103] As Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister, later observed, this was ultimately because no one had the military forces on hand to withstand an Italian attack.[104] In October 1935, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked the recently-passed Neutrality Act and placed an embargo on arms and ammunition with both sides, but extended a further "moral embargo" to the belligerent Italians, including other trade items. On 5 October and later on 29 February 1936 the United States endeavoured, with uncertain success, to limit its exports of oil and other materials to normal peacetime levels.[105] The League sanctions were lifted on 4 July 1936, but by that point Italy had already gained control of the urban areas of Abyssinia.[106]
In December 1935, the Hoare-Laval Pact was an attempt by British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval to end the conflict in Abyssinia by drawing up a plan to partition the country into two parts, an Italian sector and an Abyssinian sector. Mussolini was prepared to agree to the Pact, but news of the deal was leaked and both the British and French public venomously protested against it, describing it as a sell-out of Abyssinia. Hoare and Laval were forced to resign their positions, and both the British and French governments dissociated themselves from their respective men.[107] In June 1936, although there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the Assembly of the League of Nations in person, the Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I spoke to the Assembly to appeal for its help in protecting his country.[108]
As was the case with Japan, the vigour of the major powers in responding to the crisis in Abyssinia was tempered by their perception that the fate of this poor and far-off country, inhabited by non-Europeans, was not a central interest of theirs.[citation needed] In addition, it showed how the League could be influenced by the self-interest of its members;[109] one of the reasons why the sanctions were not very harsh was that both Britain and France feared the prospect of driving Mussolini and German dictator Adolf Hitler into an alliance.[110]
On 17 July 1936, the Spanish Army launched a coup d'état, leading to a prolonged armed conflict between Spanish Republicans (the leftist government of Spain) and the Nationalists (conservative, anti-communist rebels who included most officers of the Spanish Army).[111] Alvarez del Vayo, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to the League in September 1936 for arms to defend its territorial integrity and political independence. The League members, however, would not intervene in the Spanish Civil War nor prevent foreign intervention in the conflict. Hitler and Mussolini continued to aid General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist insurrectionists, and the Soviet Union aided the Spanish Republic. In February 1937, the League did launch a ban on the intervention of foreign national volunteers.
Following a long record of instigating localised conflicts throughout the 1930s, Japan began a full scale invasion of China on 7 July, 1937. On 12 September, the Chinese representative, Wellington Koo, appealed to the League for an international intervention. Western countries were sympathetic to the Chinese in their struggle against Japan, particularly in their stubborn defence of Shanghai, a city with a substantial number of foreigners. However, the League was unable to provide any practical measure other than a final statement that gave China "spiritual support." On 4 October, the League adjourned and turned the case over to the Nine Power Treaty Conference.
Article eight of the League's covenant gave the League the task of reducing "armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations"[112] A significant amount of the League's time and energy was devoted to disarmament even though many member governments were uncertain that such extensive disarmament could be achieved or was even desirable.[113] The Allied Powers were also under obligation from the Treaty of Versailles to attempt to disarm and the armament restrictions imposed on the defeated countries had been described as the first step toward world wide disarmament.[113] The League Covenant assigned the League the task of creating a disarmament plan for each state but the Council devolved this responsibility to a special commission set-up in 1926 to prepare for the 1932-34 World Disarmament Conference.[114] Members of the League held different views towards disarmament. The French were reluctant to reduce their armaments without a guarantee of military help if they were attacked, Poland and Czechoslovakia felt vulnerable to attack from the west and wanted the League's response to aggression against its members to be strengthened before they disarmed.[115] Without this guarantee they would not reduce armaments because they felt the risk of attack from Germany was too great. Fear of attack increased as Germany regained strength after the First World War especially after Hitler gained power and became German Chancellor in 1933. In particular Germany's attempts to overturn the Treaty of Versailles and the reconstruction of the German military made France increasingly unwilling to disarm.[114]
The World Disarmament Conference was convened by the League of Nations in Geneva in 1932 with representatives from 60 states. A one year truce on the expansion of armaments, later extended by a few months, was proposed at the start of the conference.[116] The Disarmament Commission obtained initial agreement from France, Italy, Japan, and Britain to limit the size of their navies. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, facilitated by the commission in 1928, failed in its objective of outlawing war. Ultimately, the Commission failed to halt the military build-up by Germany, Italy and Japan during the 1930s. The League was mostly silent in the face of major events leading to World War II such as Hitler's re-militarisation of the Rhineland, occupation of the Sudetenland and Anschluss of Austria, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In fact, League members themselves re-armed. In 1933, Japan simply withdrew from the League rather than submit to its judgement, as did Germany in 1933 (using the failure of the World Disarmament Conference to agree to arms parity between France and Germany as a pretext), and Italy in 1937. The League commissioner in Danzig was unable to deal with German claims on the city, a significant contributing factor in the outbreak of World War II in 1939.[citation needed] The final significant act of the League was to expel the Soviet Union in December 1939 after it invaded Finland.
The onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, which was to avoid any future world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organization.
The origins of the League as an organization created by the Allied Powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a "League of Victors".[117][118] It also tied the League to the Treaty of Versailles, so that when the Treaty became discredited and unpopular, this reflected on the League of Nations.
The League's supposed neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous vote of its nine-, later fifteen-, member Council to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions as certain decisions required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the fact that the main members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility that their fate would be decided by other countries and had therefore, in effect, by enforcing unanimous voting given themselves the power of veto.
Representation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their time as part of the League was short. Most notably missing was the position that the United States of America was supposed to play in the League, not only in terms of helping to ensure world peace and security but also in financing the League. The U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took but the United States Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919.[119] Ruth Henig has suggested that, had the United States been a member of the League, it would have also provided backup to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more secure and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more regarding Germany and so made the rise to power of the Nazi party less likely.[120] On the contrary, Henig acknowledges that if America had been a member of the League, its reluctance to engage in war with European states and to enact economic sanctions may have hampered the ability of the League to deal with international incidents.[120] The structure of government in America may also have made its membership problematic as its representatives at the League could not have made decisions on behalf of the United States executive branch without this having already been approved by the legislative branches.[121]
In January 1920, when the League began, Germany was not permitted to join because it was seen as the aggressor in World War I. Soviet Russia was also initially excluded from the League, as communist views were not welcomed by the victors of World War I. The League was further weakened when critical powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council, but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its invasion of the Chinese territory of Manchuria.[122] Italy also began as a permanent member of the Council but withdrew in 1937. The League had accepted Germany as a member in 1926, deeming it a "peace-loving country", but Adolf Hitler pulled Germany out when he came to power in 1933.[123]
Another important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of collective security, that formed the basis of the League, and international relations between individual states.[124] The collective security system the League used meant that nations were required to act against states they considered friends, and in a way that might endanger their national interests, to support states that they had no normal affinity with.[124] This weakness was exposed during the Abyssinia Crisis when Britain and France had to balance attempts to maintain the security they had attempted to create for themselves in Europe "in order to defend against the enemies of internal order",[125] in which Italy's support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia as a member of the League.[126]
On 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war of conquest against Abyssinia, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told the House of Commons that collective security had
"failed ultimately because of the reluctance of nearly all the nations in Europe to proceed to what I might call military sanctions ... The real reason, or the main reason, was that we discovered in the process of weeks that there was no country except the aggressor country which was ready for war ... [I]f collective action is to be a reality and not merely a thing to be talked about, it means not only that every country is to be ready for war; but must be ready to go to war at once. That is a terrible thing, but it is an essential part of collective security."[104]
Ultimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Adolf Hitler.[127]
The League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very reluctant to do.[128] The League's two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League. Immediately after World War I, pacifism was a strong force both in the populations and the governments of the two countries. The British Conservatives were especially tepid on the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of the organization.[citation needed]
Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France and its other members while at the same time advocating collective security meant that the League was unwittingly depriving itself of the only forceful means by which its authority would be upheld. If the League was to force countries to abide by international law, it would require the Royal Navy and the French Army to do the enforcing.
When the British Cabinet discussed the concept of the League during the First World War, Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretary, circulated a memorandum on the subject. He started by saying: "Generally it appears to me that any such scheme is dangerous to us, because it will create a sense of security which is wholly fictitious".[129] He attacked the British pre-war faith in the sanctity of treaties as delusional and concluded by claiming:
"It [a League of Nations] will only result in failure and the longer that failure is postponed the more certain it is that this country will have been lulled to sleep. It will put a very strong lever into the hands of the well-meaning idealists who are to be found in almost every Government, who deprecate expenditure on armaments, and, in the course of time, it will almost certainly result in this country being caught at a disadvantage".[129]
The Foreign Office minister Sir Eyre Crowe also wrote a memorandum to the British Cabinet claiming that "a solemn league and covenant" would just be "a treaty, like other treaties": "What is there to ensure that it will not, like other treaties, be broken?". Crowe went on to express scepticism of the planned "pledge of common action" against aggressors because he believed the actions of individual states would still be determined by national interests and the balance of power. He also criticised the proposal for League economic sanctions because it would ineffectual and that "It is all a question of real military preponderance". Universal disarmament was a practical impossibility, Crowe warned.[129]
As the situation in Europe deteriorated into war, the Assembly transferred enough power to the Secretary General on 30 September 1938 and 14 December 1939 to allow the League to continue to legally exist and to carry on reduced operations.[54] The headquarters of the League, the Palace of Peace, remained unoccupied for nearly six years until the Second World War ended.[130]
At the 1943 Tehran Conference, the Allied Powers agreed to create a new body to replace the League: the United Nations. Many League bodies, such as the International Labour Organization, continued to function and eventually became affiliated with the UN.[43] The structure of the United Nations was intended to make it more effective than the League.
The final meeting of the League of Nations was held in April 1946 in Geneva. Delegates from 34 nations attended the assembly.[131] This session concerned itself with liquidating the League: assets worth approximately $22,000,000 in 1946,[132] including the Palace of Peace and the League's archives, were given to the UN, reserve funds were returned to the nations that had supplied them, and the debts of the League were settled.[131] Robert Cecil is said to have summed up the feeling of the gathering during a speech to the final assembly when he said:
Let us boldly state that aggression wherever it occurs and however it may be defended, is an international crime, that it is the duty of every peace-loving state to resent it and employ whatever force is necessary to crush it, that the machinery of the Charter, no less than the machinery of the Covenant, is sufficient for this purpose if properly used, and that every well-disposed citizen of every state should be ready to undergo any sacrifice in order to maintain peace ... I venture to impress upon my hearers that the great work of peace is resting not only on the narrow interests of our own nations, but even more on those great principles of right and wrong which nations, like individuals, depend.
The League is dead. Long live the United Nations[131]
The motion that dissolved the League passed unanimously: "The League of Nations shall cease to exist except for the purpose of the liquidation of its affairs."[133] The motion also set the date for the end of the League as the day after the session was closed. On 19 April 1946, the President of the Assembly, Carl J. Hambro of Norway, declared "the twenty-first and last session of the General Assembly of the League of Nations closed."[132] As a result, the League of Nations ceased to exist on 20 April 1946.[134]
Professor David Kennedy has suggested that the League is a unique moment when international affairs were "institutionalized" as opposed to the pre-World War I methods of law and politics.[135] The principal Allies in World War II (the UK, the USSR, France, the U.S., and Republic of China) became permanent members of the UN Security Council; these new "Great Powers" gained significant international influence, mirroring the League Council. Decisions of the UN Security Council are binding on all members of the UN; however, unanimous decisions are not required, unlike the League Council. Permanent members of the UN Security Council are also given a shield to protect their vital interests, which has prevented the UN acting decisively in many cases.
Similarly, the UN does not have its own standing armed forces, but the UN has been more successful than the League in calling for its members to contribute to armed interventions, such as during the Korean War and the peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia. The UN has in some cases been forced to rely on economic sanctions. The UN has also been more successful than the League in attracting members from the nations of the world, making it more representative.
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